When it comes down to it, maintaining a healthy work-life balance is really all about maintaining an appropriate level of happiness. Because that’s the goal of the end day, finding the right level of work that still allows you to enjoy life.

Some people actually enjoy sacrificing a bit of their personal life in pursuit of their career. And some would prefer to get out on the town on Friday nights.

Well, these places in Massachusetts have an objectively strong work-life balance. They are places where people have jobs, can live comfortably, and then enjoy things like family and friends.

We took a look at data from the most recent American Community Survey from the Census Department to identify which of the 119 biggest places in Massachusetts have mastered the art of not bringing work home with them and living a balanced lifestyle.

After getting home early to take the kids to a baseball game, we were left with this set of ten places in the Bay State that have the best work-life balance:

Lawrence

Springfield

Worcester

Lowell

Lynn

Wellesley

Holyoke

Brockton

North Amherst

New Bedford

Read on to see how we identified the towns that have prioritized their lives to maximize their happiness.

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How we determined the places in Massachusetts with the Best Work-Life Balance

There are certain characteristics that all people that have achieved work-life balance — happiness and satisfaction.

They get to spend an adequate amount of time on the job above and then spend the rest of the time doing things that make them happy.

With that in mind, we identified this set of criteria from the American Community Survey:

Commute Time (Shorter is better)

Hours worked per week (Shorter is better)

Size of household (Higher is better)

Things to do per capita (Higher is better)

Basically, if you don’t waste time getting to and from work, work less, and have a family, you’re on the road to work-life balance.

It’s also important that a place offers things to do and that people that want to work can actually work. For that reason, we included the raw count of things to do for a city based on Yelp data.

We then ranked each place from one to 66 for each criteria, with one being the best in any given category.

Finally, we took the average rank across all criteria, with the place posting the lowest overall score earning the title “Place with the Best Work-Life Balance in Massachusetts”.

Read on to learn the specifics of the ten places in the Bay State that are at home relaxing right now.